This exhibition documents the making of Blue Print Voyage, a multimedia collaborative installation created by children of the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, the United South End Settlements, and the West End House Boys and Girls Club of Allston-Brighton, in response to their experiences working within the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s collections.

Between January and May 2006 about one hundred children, ages seven and twelve, from the three organizations explored and created works of art in the MFA. This collaboration brings together the community youth groups’ multiple perspectives on the collections in a new map of the museum.

Each group participated over a span of seven days. The first visit included an introduction to the project, during which each child was given a sketchbook with a map of the MFA’s galleries. The activities on each subsequent day began with stories, conversations, and sketching. At the end of the session, participants marked the galleries they had visited on their maps. Then the second half of each visit was spent making art. Using sheets of self-adhesive vinyl, the children cut and layered their drawings to create collage decals inspired by artworks from a specific Museum gallery. On their last visit, the children helped with the installation of the exhibition, making their own version of the MFA map. The individual works come together in this overlapping collage to create a new collaborative mural, made up of small fragments and memories of the museum, collected and recreated in the children’s work.

This program was made possible through generous funding from the Linde Family Foundation.